Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

OUR OLD FEUILLAGE, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Always our old feuillage!
Last Line: Collect bouquets of the incomparable feuillage of these states?
Subject(s): United States; America


Always our old feuillage!
Always Florida's green peninsula -- always the priceless
delta of Louisiana -- always the cotton-fields of
Alabama and Texas,
Always California's golden hills and hollows, and the
silver mountains of New Mexico -- always soft-breath'd Cuba,
Always the vast slope drain'd by the Southern sea,
inseparable with the slopes drain'd by the Eastern and
Western seas,
The area the eighty-third year of these States, the three
and a half millions of square miles,
The eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-coast on
the main, the thirty thousand miles of river navigation,
The seven millions of distinct families and the same number
of dwellings -- always these, and more, branching
forth into numberless branches,
Always the free range and diversity -- always the continent
of Democracy;
Always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities,
travelers, Kanada, the snows;
Always these compact lands tied at the hips with the belt
stringing the huge oval lakes;
Always the West with strong native persons, the increasing
density there, the habitans, friendly, threatening,
ironical, scorning invaders;
All sights, South, North, East -- all deeds promiscuously
done at all times,
All characters, movements, growths, a few noticed, myriads unnoticed,
Through Mannahatta's streets I walking, these things gathering,
On interior rivers by night in the glare of pine knots,
steamboats wooding up,
Sunlight by day on the valley of the Susquehanna, and on
the valleys of the Potomac and Rappahannock, and the
valleys of the Roanoke and Delaware,
In their northerly wilds beasts of prey haunting the
Adirondacks the hills, or lapping the Saginaw waters to drink,
In a lonesome inlet a sheldrake lost from the flock,
sitting on the water rocking silently,
In farmers' barns oxen in the stable, their harvest labor
done, they rest standing, they are too tired,
Afar on arctic ice the she-walrus lying drowsily while her
cubs play around,
The hawk sailing where men have not yet sail'd, the
farthest polar sea, ripply, crystalline, open, beyond the floes,
White drift spooning ahead where the ship in the tempest dashes,
On solid land what is done in cities as the bells strike
midnight together,
In primitive woods the sounds there also sounding, the howl
of the wolf, the scream of the panther, and the hoarse
bellow of the elk,
In winter beneath the hard blue ice of Moosehead lake, in
summer visible through the clear waters, the great
trout swimming,
In lower latitudes in warmer air in the Carolinas the large
black buzzard floating slowly high beyond the tree tops,
Below, the red cedar festoon'd with tylandria, the pines
and cypresses growing out of the white sand that
spreads far and flat,
Rude boats descending the big Pedee, climbing plants,
parasites with color'd flowers and berries enveloping huge trees,
The waving drapery on the live-oak trailing long and low,
noiselessly waved by the wind,
The camp of Georgia wagoners just after dark, the
supper-fires and the cooking and eating by whites and negroes,
Thirty or forty great wagons, the mules, cattle, horses,
feeding from troughs,
The shadows, gleams, up under the leaves of the old
sycamore-trees, the flames with the black smoke from
the pitch-pine curling and rising;
Southern fishermen fishing, the sounds and inlets of North
Carolina's coast, the shad-fishery and the
herring-fishery, the large sweep-seines, the
windlasses on shore work'd by horses, the clearing,
curing, and packing-houses;
Deep in the forest in piney woods turpentine dropping from
the incisions in the trees, there are the turpentine works,
There are the negroes at work in good health, the ground in
all directions is cover'd with pine straw;
In Tennessee and Kentucky slaves busy in the coalings, at
the forge, by the furnace-blaze, or at the corn-shucking,
In Virginia, the planter's son returning after a long
absence, joyfully welcom'd and kiss'd by the aged mulatto nurse,
On rivers boatmen safely moor'd at nightfall in their boats
under shelter of high banks,
Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or
fiddle, others sit on the gunwale smoking and talking;
Late in the afternoon the mocking-bird, the American mimic,
singing in the Great Dismal Swamp,
There are the greenish waters, the resinous odor, the
plenteous moss, the cypress-tree, and the juniper-tree;
Northward, young men of Mannahatta, the target company from
an excursion returning home at evening, the
musket-muzzles all bear bunches of flowers presented by women;
Children at play, or on his father's lap a young boy fallen
asleep, (how his lips move! how he smiles in his sleep!)
The scout riding on horseback over the plains west of the
Mississippi, he ascends a knoll and sweeps his eyes around;
California life, the miner, bearded, dress'd in his rude
costume, the stanch California friendship, the sweet
air, the graves one in passing meets solitary just
aside the horse-path;
Down in Texas the cotton-field, the negro-cabins, drivers
driving mules or oxen before rude carts, cotton bales
piled on banks and wharves;
Encircling all, vast-darting up and wide, the American
Soul, with equal hemispheres, one Love, one Dilation or Pride;
In arriere the peace-talk with the Iroquois the aborigines,
the calumet, the pipe of good-will, arbitration, and indorsement,
The sachem blowing the smoke first toward the sun and then
toward the earth,
The drama of the scalp-dance enacted with painted faces and
guttural exclamations,
The setting out of the war-party, the long and stealthy march,
The single file, the swinging hatchets, the surprise and
slaughter of enemies;
All the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes of these
States, reminiscences, institutions,
All these States compact, every square mile of these States
without excepting a particle;
Me pleas'd, rambling in lanes and country fields, Paumanok's fields,
Observing the spiral flight of two little yellow
butterflies shuffling between each other, ascending
high in the air,
The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects, the fall
traveler southward but returning northward early in the spring,
The country boy at the close of the day driving the herd of
cows and shouting to them as they loiter to browse by
the roadside,
The city wharf, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore,
Charleston, New Orleans, San Francisco,
The departing ships when the sailors heave at the capstan;
Evening -- me in my room -- the setting sun,
The setting summer sun shining in my open window, showing
the swarm of flies, suspended, balancing in the air in
the centre of the room, darting athwart, up and down,
casting swift shadows in specks on the opposite wall
where the shine is;
The athletic American matron speaking in public to crowds
of listeners,
Males, females, immigrants, combinations, the copiousness,
the individuality of the States, each for itself --
the money-makers,
Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces, the windlass,
lever, pulley, all certainties,
The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity,
In space the sporades, the scatter'd islands, the stars --
on the firm earth, the lands, my lands,
O lands! all so dear to me -- what you are, (whatever it
is,) I putting it at random in these songs, become a
part of that, whatever it is,
Southward there, I screaming, with wings slow flapping,
with the myriads of gulls wintering along the coasts of Florida,
Otherways there atwixt the banks of the Arkansas, the Rio
Grande, the Nueces, the Brazos, the Tombigbee, the Red
River, the Saskatchawan or the Osage, I with the
spring waters laughing and skipping and running,
Northward, on the sands, on some shallow bay of Paumanok, I
with parties of snowy herons wading in the wet to seek
worms and aquatic plants,
Retreating, triumphantly twittering, the king-bird, from
piercing the crow with its bill, for amusement -- and
I triumphantly twittering,
The migrating flock of wild geese alighting in autumn to
refresh themselves, the body of the flock feed, the
sentinels outside move around with erect heads
watching, and are from time to time reliev'd by other
sentinels -- and I feeding and taking turns with the rest,
In Kanadian forests the moose, large as an ox, corner'd by
hunters, rising desperately on his hind-feet, and
plunging with his forefeet, the hoofs as sharp as
knives -- and I, plunging at the hunters, corner'd and desperate,
In the Mannahatta, streets, piers, shipping, store-houses,
and the countless workmen working in the shops,
And I too of the Mannahatta, singing thereof -- and no less
in myself than the whole of the Mannahatta in itself,
Singing the song of These, my ever-united lands -- my body
no more inevitably united, part to part, and made out
of a thousand diverse contributions one identity, any
more than my lands are inevitably united and made ONE IDENTTTY;
Nativities, climates, the grass of the great pastoral Plains,
Cities, labors, death, animals, products, war, good and
evil -- these me,
These affording, in all their particulars, the old
feuillage to me and to America, how can I do less than
pass the clew of the union of them, to afford the like to you?
Whoever you are! how can I but offer you divine leaves,
that you also be eligible as I am?
How can I but as here chanting, invite you for yourself to
collect bouquets of the incomparable feuillage of these States?





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net